Facebook, which recently fell under the Meta umbrella, along with Instagram serve 4.4 users around the world which makes it one of the best places to market your products. However, Facebook marketing and advertising can be a little challenging for someone without experience in marketing.
If you are a small business or entrepreneur and do not know where to begin then this article is for you.
Before we begin, this article assumes that your business already has a Facebook page and a Facebook business account. If you do not already have a page, read this article for help, and if you do not already have an ad account in business manager, refer to this article for help.
Let’s jump right into it, shall we?
Create Facebook ads in 5 simple steps:
- Choose a goal.
- Add your creative.
- Define your audience.
- Set your budget and duration.
- Decide where you want your ad to appear.
1. Choose a goal using Facebook marketing
Here are some of the ad objectives you can choose from:
- Get More Messages
- Get More Website Visitors
- Promote Your Business Locally
- Promote Your Page
- Boost Your Post
- Build Your Business
- Get More Customer Contacts
- Boost an Instagram Post
Your goal depends on the kind of business you have. Let’s say you own a restaurant and would like to get more customers to visit. So, targeting customers in your area who would want to and could easily visit your physical location would be a good idea. Given this criteria, promoting your business locally could be the goal you should go after.
Let’s try another example: let’s say you own a travel agency in Egypt and target travelers who plan trips from the UAE to Egypt. Your agency offers hotel reservations, flights tickets, airport pickups and drop-offs, as well as daily tours in Egypt. Such services are tailored to the customers’ budget, interests, number of travelers, and many other variables. If this is the case, then getting more customer contacts could be the goal for you.
2. Adding your creatives to your Facebook marketing content:
Facebook marketing allows you to add a visual to your content, which can be an image showcasing your products in use or a video about your services.
Your ad has three key components:
- Visuals: Something eye-catching that will grab people’s attention and draw them in
- Text: The text should complement the image and lead your customers to take the action you desire
- A call-to-action button. The call-to-action button directs people to take that next step into making a purchase
Let’s get back to our restaurant example. Your visual can be images of your delicious meals to get your customers’ saliva dribbling and push them to get moving towards placing a call to reserve a table.
As a travel agency, your visual can be an exciting video of clip of the tours you offer, a combination of paragliding, bungee jumping, ziplining, skiing, historical attraction, or any other activity that might get people to request a call or try and learn more about your tours on your website.
Related: To learn how to convert leads into paying customers you may want to read this article.
3. Define your audience for your Facebook marketing campaign
Defining your audience is not only a vital step in Facebook marketing, it is also very important in digital marketing as a whole. Defining your audience will help you target the right customer and focus your investment on them.
The most basic way is to define your current customers and understanding what they all have in common. This could range from the fact that they are all fans of Beyonce to them being females between the ages of 25 to 32.
Once you have defined what they have in common, you can select those criteria for Facebook to target them. So, your ad will only be visible to those of your choosing.
Getting back to our restaurant example: all your customers live or work within 2KM from your physical location, they are all workers who eat at your restaurant during lunch hours.
Your audience could be people interested in business, employed individuals, located 2 to 3 KM away from your location, between the ages of 23 and 35, and interested in quick service.
As a travel agency, your customers could be individuals between the ages of 20 and 35, interested in extreme sports, located in Latin America, speak English and Spanish, travelers, and somehow, they all enjoy particular shows or follow specific individuals or like particular pages on Facebook.
4. Set the budget and duration of your Facebook marketing campaign
Decide how much you want to spend per day on your ad and how many days you would like your ad to run. Your daily budget is the average amount you'll spend on your ad each day.
For example, you could spend 50 AED a day for 2 weeks which brings your total budget to 700 AED.
5. Decide where you want your ad to appear across Facebook and its other apps
When you create an ad using Facebook marketing, you can run your ad on Facebook as well as Instagram, Messenger, Facebook Market Place, and Facebook’s Newsfeed.
Deciding this will, again, depend on your audience. If your audience is active on Instagram, then you may want to run your ad on Instagram as well.
As a travel agency that targets travelers between the ages of 18 and 35, you may want to advertise on Instagram only and disregard the other apps, for example.
Extra tips for Facebook marketing
Here are some extra tips to help you get started with Facebook ads:
- Create more than one audience; start with a broad one and a narrow one for testing purposes. You may adjust the settings as much as needed to keep your audience dynamic and target as many of the right potential customers as possible.
- People go to social media to stay connected. Keep your ad as simple and easy to understand as possible to connect with your audience.
- Given that we have established deciding who your audience is and what they like is vital and difficult, you may need to keep changing your visuals based on the engagement your ad receives.
Related: if you would like to dive deeper in online marketing, paid promotions, and digital advertisements, you may want read this article for free digital marketing courses with certificates.
